by USA TODAY

by USA TODAY

LONDON (AP) - It's Colin Firth, but not as we know him. He's 12 feet tall and made of fiberglass.

A statue of brooding Mr. Darcy, the character played by Oscar-winner Firth in Pride and Prejudice, was installed Monday in Serpentine Lake in London's Hyde Park.

The sculpture is the latest conflation of public art and advertising. It shows Darcy emerging from the water in a soaked shirt, recreating a swoon-worthy scene from the 1995 television adaptation of Jane Austen's novel.

The scene helped turn Firth into a sex symbol and is regularly voted among Britain's most memorable TV moments. Firth later won the best actor Oscar playing the stuttering King George VI in The King's Speech.

One of the Darcy sculptors, Toby Crowther, said the work took the lake scene as a starting point but also drew on other depictions of Austen's romantic hero.

The statue, which shows Darcy from the waist up, was placed amid the swans and swimmers in the lake to promote Drama, a new free digital TV channel in the U.K. dedicated to British programs such as Pride and Prejudice.

The statue is scheduled to go on display at several locations before being installed in a lake in Lyme Park in northwest England where the famous scene was filmed. It will remain there until February.

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